Possible Plane Wreckage Found

Possible debris from an Air France jet that mysteriously disappeared Sunday night has been found floating in the Atlantic Ocean, according to Brazilian military pilots.

The Airbus 330-203 jetliner – which had two Americans (and one S.C. native) among its 228 passengers and crew – hit a patch of rough weather four hours after it took off from Rio de Janiero Sunday evening bound for Paris.

The plane disappeared minutes after sending out a message that it was experiencing electrical problems, leading many to speculate that the jet was hit by lightning.

From the NY Times:

The debris included an airplane seat cushion, a life jacket, some white pieces of material and signs of fuel, the (Brazilian Air Force) spokesman, Jorge Amaral, said. It was sighted about 600 miles off Brazil’s northeastern coast and about 400 miles northeast of the Brazilian island of Fernando do Noronha, roughly along the plane’s scheduled flight path from Rio de Janiero to Paris.

Working through the night, ships and aircraft have been hunting for signs of the aircraft, an Airbus 330, as investigators grappled with a devastating enigma: how a well-maintained modern jetliner, built to withstand extreme electrical and physical buffeting, could have gone down silently and mysteriously.

The sighted wreckage is “very little material in relation to the size” of the Air France plane, Mr. Amaral said, according to Agence France-Presse. There was little hope that any of the 228 people on board would be found alive, and Mr. Amaral said that there was no sign of life amid the debris, The Associated Press reported.

According to Greenville’s WYFF-TV, Greenville native and Clemson graduate Michael “Butch” Harris and his wife, Anne, are among those presumed lost.

Harris is a geologist with Devon Energy, an American-based oil and natural gas company, and was traveling with his wife to a training seminar that was to be followed by a vacation.

Harris and his wife were the only confirmed American passengers on the flight.